CHICAGO _ Police will boost their social media monitoring and create rapid response teams who will respond to looting and more quickly shut down areas such as downtown Chicago if needed, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said on Friday.
Under pressure to prevent a third round of widespread looting, Lightfoot said the city will increase monitoring of social media through a specialized 20-person task force and rapidly redeploy teams if they get wind of potential looting.
Streets and Sanitation trucks also will be used to help block traffic, and the city will deploy "new and enhanced tactics" to shut down parts of the city as necessary, including blocking and disabling vehicles and using concrete structures to limit movement, she said.
A special task force on looting also is being created, she said.
"There can never be any place in Chicago where businesses are afraid to open, where residents and visitors are afraid to travel and shop, or where employees are afraid to go to work," Lightfoot said.
Lightfoot announced the city's plan alongside police Superintendent David Brown, downtown Alderman Brendan Reilly, Alderman Chris Taliaferro, the City Council's public safety chairman; Lincoln Park Alderman Michele Smith and Alderman Pat Dowell, who represents parts of the South Side and the South Loop. The FBI special agent in charge and a representative from U.S. Attorney John Lausch's office also attended.
Lightfoot also spoke alongside Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx, who she and Brown implicitly criticized earlier in the week for how they handled looting cases in the spring.
Brown said the city's message is simple.
"Chicago does not belong to looters and thieves," Brown said. "Chicago belongs to the good people who work hard every day to earn an honest living."
The FBI also is working with Chicago police on cases involving the unrest and other crimes. In Chicago, the FBI and other federal agencies have been beefed up this summer to work on Operation Legend, a national law enforcement effort from the Trump administration, to address spikes in violence in several U.S. cities.
"In 55 years I've never seen it like this in Chicago. It's enough," said Emmerson Buie Jr., special agent-in-charge of the FBI's Chicago office. "We all have to take a stand. We have to bond. We have to band together."
